Saturday, September 24, 2005

Beatings in Iraq routine

Three former members of the Army's 82nd Airborne Division have said that soldiers in that division routinely beat Iraqi prisoners, both supposedly to gather intel and for sport:

In one incident, the Human Rights Watch report states, an off-duty cook broke a detainee's leg with a metal baseball bat. Detainees were also stacked, fully clothed, in human pyramids and forced to hold five-gallon water jugs with arms outstretched or do jumping jacks until they passed out, the report says. "We would give them blows to the head, chest, legs and stomach, and pull them down, kick dirt on them," one sergeant told Human Rights Watch researchers during one of four interviews in July and August. "This happened every day."

The sergeant continued: "Some days we would just get bored, so we would have everyone sit in a corner and then make them get in a pyramid. This was before Abu Ghraib but just like it. We did it for amusement."

It is time to bring the troops home and prosecute all of those many "bad apples" guilty of torture and other war crimes, starting at the top: Bush, Rumsfeld and Meyers. Today is the day to hit the streets and let our criminal government know that their time is up. I'll be in the march here in Ann Arbor, and know several people who got on the buses last night to go to DC.